


The Star to Every Wand'ring Bark

by fadagaski



Series: Love's Not Time's Fool [2]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Aphrodisiacs, Beach Sex, Blow Jobs, Costume Parties & Masquerades, Dry Orgasm, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enthusiastic Consent, Hand Jobs, Handcuffs, Kinktober 2020, M/M, Massage, Masturbation, Multiple Orgasms, Neck Kissing, Nipple Licking, Nipple Play, Non-Penetrative Sex Toys, Overstimulation, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Prostate Massage, Public Blow Jobs, Rain Sex, Restraints, Rimming, Semi-Public Sex, Vibrators
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:14:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26854303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadagaski/pseuds/fadagaski
Summary: A thousand years, five hundred lives, the innumerable ways they have intertwined.Fic 1: a Venetian masquerade, 1713.Fic 2: a Hawaiian beach, 1977.Fic 3: a Korean hotel, 2007.Fic 4: a London doctor's office, 1881.Fic 5: a Nevadan roadside, 1950.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: Love's Not Time's Fool [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1961773
Comments: 86
Kudos: 174





	1. A Venetian Masquerade, February 1713

**Author's Note:**

> April 2020 lasted approximately 17 years, therefore I have decided that October 2020 will last as long as it damn well takes to complete the challenge.
> 
> Also, I am combining prompts. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1\. **Body worship // masks // formal wear**  
>  2\. Asphyxiation // orgasm denial or edging // **public**

#### Venice, Italy - February 1713

Carnival has changed a lot since Nicolò was a boy, but the Venetians doing everything to excess certainly hasn’t. Out on the canals and bridges there is the general chaos of the world gone topsy-turvy. Music reaches over the wall, violins and drums and singing, shouts and laughter too as the raucous city-wide party ratchets up a notch with the setting of the sun. 

The party is intensifying in here as well: the Doge’s palace, its central courtyard crammed with the cream of Venetian high society, a dizzying whirl of people in costumes ranging from the sumptuous to the scandalous to the bizarre. With masks on and night fallen, the respected noble lords and ladies of the day are transformed. True passions are revealed in anonymity, the seven sins in abundant display. Already there are men and women staggeringly drunk and shrieking laughter at each other. The servants scurry in and out of the shadows carrying vasts quantities of food from the kitchens. In the darkest corners of the courtyards, people made brash behind their masks let their hands wander at will. 

Leaning casually against a marble pillar, Nicolò finds himself in a triple disguise. Playing a priest is his day-to-day undercover role; now he is wrapped in a woman’s overlarge shawl, the cheap wool of a maid’s skirt scratching at his legs, a half-mask of plain black leather tied across his nose and eyes. The Doge invited Nicolò personally as his ally and confidante, but the name of the game is to remain unrecognised the whole length of the evening. 

In that sense, both the Doge and Nicolò have already lost. Currently the Doge, an aging aristocrat with shrewd political sense, is holding centre-stage by the fountain, making sure his guests have such a grand - and incriminating - time on his coin that they will never consider the possibility of opposing him. And Nicolò - 

Nicolò is waiting. He wants to be found by one man, and one man only. It’s been _weeks_ since he last saw Yusuf, touched him, kissed him. Nicolò’s heart yearns; his body aches for the warmth, the scent, the feel of Yusuf. Impatiently, Nicolò studies the crowd, keen eyes flicking from masked figure to masked figure, squinting for a giveaway tell to reveal Yusuf’s identity. 

There? Dancing with the gentleman in matador red? No, the gait is all wrong. 

Or there, disguised as one of the musicians barely audible over the din of conversation? Yusuf has great skill with a lute, but - no. The skin of the hands is too pale. 

Perhaps there, among a trio of ladies in Chinese silk? For a moment, Nicolò thinks it might be, until the man presses kisses to the heaving bosoms thrust in his direction. 

Nicolò chews his lip, frustrated and antsy. He has been looking forward to Carnival since they parted ways, the agreed-upon liaison in the middle of their Venetian job. He could barely sleep last night for wanting, woke up hard and leaking under his shift, gnashed his teeth into his pillow rather than touch himself. Saving himself for Yusuf. 

If only he could find him. 

The hour draws later, stars crawling across the rectangle of black sky overhead, and the crowd grows wilder. In his immediate vicinity, Nicolò counts fifteen people so drunk they can’t walk. Secreted in the shadowy recesses behind him are a dozen guests pursuing the thrills of ecstasy. The longer he stands there listening to the moans and sighs of couples and triples and more, the hotter he flushes beneath his heavy shawl. He strains for hope but his heart begins to sink in his chest. Perhaps Yusuf has been waylaid. Perhaps he couldn’t sneak in. Perhaps Andromache has returned earlier than expected. 

Perhaps he isn’t coming. 

Disappointment tastes bitter at the back of Nicolò’s throat. It could be weeks more before they have a chance to arrange another meeting. There is war brewing against the Ottomans, and the Doge will have frequent need for counsel from his favourite priest. 

Nicolò folds his arms, hunching his shoulders, mentally digging in, trying not to sulk like a child he hasn’t been for a very, very long time. He has every faith in Yusuf, but sometimes life interferes in their plans. He will stay until the end of the party, hours from now. He will wait, and hope, and if Yusuf does not come, it will make their next reunion all the sweeter. 

It’s a comfort as cold as the marble at his side. 

And then, long after the midnight bell tolls, the crowd shifts, splits and - there. Across the courtyard, standing alone, a man in a stunning knee-length coat of green silk velvet, heavily embroidered in silver thread, brunet wig tumbling in wild curls to the shoulders and topped by a black tricorn hat, face entirely covered by a mask of white and gold with feathers sprouting at the sides. Nicolò’s heart lurches into double-time before he can fully articulate how he _knows_. 

It’s the calves. Nicolò has kissed and stroked those curved muscles hundreds of times over the years. He knows their shape in the dark, among a crowd, in fine white silk stockings. His fingers twitch with the need to touch. 

There’s no conscious decision. Nicolò’s feet start moving of their own accord. His eyes don’t waver, his ears fall deaf to the din echoing off the surrounding palace walls. There is an invisible thread connecting them; these past few weeks it has strained and frayed at the distance. Now it winches them together. 

Nicolò picks up speed, reaches out arms first, collides bodily with Yusuf, drives him backwards into the deep dark recesses. Yusuf chuckles low in his throat and doesn’t resist. It’s the wall that stops them, stops Yusuf first, another half a step before Nicolò is pressed full-length against him, masked forehead to masked forehead. Warm dark eyes glitter familiarly out of two narrow holes. 

“Well who might this be?” Yusuf murmurs lowly, muffled through the full mask. “A mysterious stranger taking advantage of the season to accost my person?” His hands ruck up Nicolò’s shawl to slide under, stroking over Nicolò’s heaving sides. 

“Yusuf,” Nicolò whines. His skin thrills to Yusuf’s touch even beneath layers of clothing. It arcs through him hot as lightning, the drum of his heart like rolling thunder. Hands sliding lower, Yusuf grips Nicolò’s hips and pulls him groin to groin. Nicolò groans, grinds hard against Yusuf’s cock radiating heat through his silk breeches. 

“Did you miss me, my love?” Yusuf says. Nicolò knows the shape of his smile behind the mask, the creases at his eyes as he teases him, and the feeling that spears him is too big to be contained. 

“Shut up,” he growls, and kisses him, kisses his unyielding papier mâché lips, tastes paint and perfume and nothing of Yusuf himself. It’s an awful cheat, the worst kind of tease after so long apart. Frantically he presses kisses across the gold latticework over the mask’s cheeks, desperate to feel Yusuf beneath his lips. He follows his nose sideways, down, curls himself closer, palms flat against the cold gritty wall to cage Yusuf in. Reaches the edge of the mask and finds the familiar rasp of a wiry beard, and the relief oozes through his knotted muscles like warm honey. 

He lingers there, mouthing at hair and skin, sucking in great lungfuls of Yusuf’s scent. Yusuf helpfully angles his head to bare the full length of his neck to Nicolò, who wastes no time, nipping at Yusuf’s earlobe before tracing his tongue down the muscle as far as he can, looping back up in wet figure-eights. Such a small amount of space, a scant few inches between mask and tight scarf. Nicolò must have spent days of his long life worshiping this beloved, vulnerable little nook where Yusuf smells warm and vital, where the beating of his heart throbs so close to the surface. 

Nicolò recommits himself to cherishing it anew. He wrestles the complicated knot of the scarf loose, cursing in Arabic as Yusuf chuckles, a buzz against Nicolò’s fingers brushing Yusuf’s throat. Nicolò bites at his earlobe in retaliation. The laughter cuts off suddenly when, as soon as more skin is bared to the air, Nicolò dives in, lips burning over beard hair to latch onto the tendon and suck hard. Yusuf’s knees buckle. His grip spasms at Nicolò’s hips, breath stuttering behind the mask. 

“Ni-Nicolò.” His head thunks back against the wall. Nicolò widens his mouth, tongue pressing wet and hot to the salt-sweet skin available. Yusuf moans. Nicolò chases the vibration along the edge of Yusuf’s beard, hard desperate kisses, relishes the raw sting in his abraded lips. Has to fight the scarf looser to reveal the ridges of Yusuf’s Adam’s apple rippling as Yusuf swallows convulsively. Nicolò hunches his back and twists his neck to duck under Yusuf’s upraised chin, gnaws at the spot where Yusuf’s needy whine emanates, finally wrenches the scarf open and promptly sinks his teeth into the deep notch at the base of Yusuf’s throat. 

Yusuf keens, back arching off the wall in a filthy roll along the length of Nicolò’s body. He grabs Nicolò’s backside in both hands and hauls him so close one of Nicolò’s knees hits the wall between Yusuf’s legs, his thigh pressing hard to Yusuf’s cock. 

“God I missed you,” Yusuf moans, fingers kneading restlessly. Nicolò is beyond words. The agony of missing Yusuf has ached in his bones and his belly for weeks. He wants to glut himself on him. After uncountable seconds laving the hollow of Yusuf’s throat, his tongue glides up the other side of his neck to taste the sweat in the creases, bites into the muscle and sucks hard enough to bruise, however temporarily. Yusuf throws his head back, hips jolting against the pressure of Nicolò’s thick thigh, and groans shockingly loud. 

Stumbling drunk behind them, a matronly voice titters. 

Like shattering glass, the boisterous noise of the party smashes back into Nicolò’s hearing. With effort, he detaches his mouth from its worship of Yusuf’s neck, rests his temple against the mask’s unfeeling cheek and pants for breath through lips still tingling with the fading sting of beard burn. He weighs up the situation in his mind, debates dragging Yusuf off in the hopes of finding somewhere private versus the immediate satisfaction of sating his hunger here. 

“My heart, please,” Yusuf begs, rutting forward, his voice a rasp down Nicolò’s spine. “It’s been too long.” 

Knees already weak, Nicolò lets gravity drag him down, stares up the length of Yusuf’s rich embroidered coat as he rucks up the pleated skirt. The impassive mask staring back is unsettling - like being on his knees for a stranger - until Yusuf blinks, a flutter of lashes through the eye holes, warm hands cupping Nicolò’s cheeks, familiar callused thumbs stroking the edge of Nicolò’s plain black mask. He turns his head to kiss the pad of one, turns the other way to suck the second into his mouth. It’s impossible to hear Yusuf’s stark inhalation but Nicolò knows it happened, echoed in a thousand memories. 

He ducks his head under the material where the thick velvet does an admirable job of blocking out the din of the unruly crowd. Yusuf radiates heat through his silk breeches. Nicolò rubs his cheek against the bulge, parts his lips to mouth wetly at the material. Hunger writhes in his belly. It’s been weeks of denial. 

No longer. 

Frantic, he scrabbles at buttons, tugs the expensive silk roughly open to reveal linen underdrawers, Yusuf’s cockhead already flushed dark, wet tip peeping out of the long front slit. The scent of him is concentrated and amplified beneath the stuffy coat. Nicolò moans, saliva flooding his mouth, buries his nose into Yusuf’s groin where his musk is strongest amongst the hair. Dizzy from the heat and the smell both, Nicolò has restrained himself for as long as he can. 

He opens wide and swallows Yusuf down whole. 

And this, this is selfish. This is greedy. Yusuf prefers it slower, enjoys when Nicolò teases him, likes a slick of tongue to the slit and a torturous climb to orgasm. But Nicolò is weak from hunger. He takes Yusuf to the root, choking on the width of him in his throat, salivating faster than he can swallow so spit leaks past his lips. He sucks back up the length of Yusuf’s cock to tongue the head but even that is too hard, too quick, and Nicolò would feel guilty but for how Yusuf spreads his legs wide, bucking away from the wall, driving himself back down Nicolò’s throat. Nicolò grabs him by the ass and hauls him in, gagging and choking and utterly uncaring about the volume as he swallows and groans and swallows some more. 

A hand lands on his head, vague through the velvet coat and woollen shawl, all the warning Nicolò gets before Yusuf swells that little bit more in his mouth and then pulses as he comes, hips jolting forward in uncontrolled spasms hard enough that Nicolò’s eyes water. His throat flutters around Yusuf’s cockhead, tongue massaging the vein on the underside as Yusuf rides out long waves of orgasm. Nicolò can tell he hasn’t touched himself either in all the time they have been parted. 

He keeps Yusuf in his mouth as he starts to soften, suckling on the shrinking head even through the oversensitive aftershocks, pressing his palms wide to Yusuf’s trembling thighs to steady them. The hand on his head pats once, twice, then vanishes. Reluctantly Nicolò lets Yusuf’s cock fall from his lips. With fingers much more gentle than before, he tucks Yusuf back into his underdrawers, then buttons up the breeches again, before he emerges from the cocoon of Yusuf’s coat skirt. 

The air is sharply cold as he rises from his aching knees. There are tears and sweat on his face. His mask, the leather made warm and moist, slips a little down the bridge of his nose. He has to shove it back into place to see Yusuf properly. A sight to behold: slumped against the wall, chest still heaving, scarf draped salaciously open, jacket askew and creased in suggestive ways. 

Still wearing the mask, bare protection against scandal, against discovery. Nicolò’s fingers itch with the desire to rip it off. 

Yusuf reaches for him with both arms and Nicolò falls willingly into his cupping body. What ache there was in his jaw and throat has already healed, and even the taste of Yusuf is fading. He buries his nose against Yusuf’s neck once more. Underneath his cheap maid’s skirt, his cock throbs in time with his pounding heartbeat. 

Behind them, expensive shoes shuffle over cobblestone. There’s dancing and laughter still as Venice’s wealthy twirl the night away. Now that he has tuned back into it, Nicolò can’t help but pick out the voices of people he knows from church, from confession, from late night dinners and parties only moderately more sedate than this one. The musicians play on. 

They’ve risked enough. Too much, maybe, though Nicolò can’t regret it. Pressing a kiss to the pulse beneath his lips, Nicolò makes himself stand upright. Yusuf’s hands trail down from his shoulders, holding onto his forearms. 

“Stay,” Yusuf murmurs, eyes wide and begging through the narrow mask holes. 

Nicolò kisses the white lips of the mask, heart splintering in his chest at the flex of Yusuf’s fingers grasping tight to him even as he steels himself. 

“Next time,” he mutters to the papier mâché, flicks his eyes up. “Next time, I will kiss your mouth.” 

Yusuf’s hands tighten, loosen, tighten, then - finally - let go. “Next time,” he says hoarsely. 

Aching head to toe, inside and out, Nicolò forces himself away before he can change his mind, and does not look back.


	2. A Hawaiian Beach, December 1977

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 3\. Sensory deprivation // pet play // **licking**  
>  4\. Gags // temperature play // **shower** or bath  
> 5\. **Swallowing** // gun play // collaring  
> 6\. Masturbation // simultaneous orgasms // **nipple play**

#### Kauai, Hawaii, USA - December, 1977

Wide-eyed and sweating, Barry says, “Gorramit,” like he’s in _Rio Bravo_ wearing cowboy boots and a Stetson, a different kind of American stereotype to his reality of ripped Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts, and his wife Brenda says, “Jesus fuck,” both hands pushing back her upswept Farah Fawcett bangs, and Nicky chides, “Joe,” without looking away from the delicate wires in his fingers and Joe says, “Y’know what Nicky -?” and he disconnects, carefully, the explosives, takes off his thick gloves and slaps them down on the lush green grass. Then he turns and walks away, heads downhill towards the distant waves and not up into the jungle because it’s only been a couple years and Joe still sometimes wakes with the stink of gunpowder and Agent Orange pungent in his nose. 

_You need a break_ , Andy had said in Glimmen, jaw hard and eyes soft, the four of them melting into the treeline like ghosts after the guns had fallen silent and the hostages were free, blood thick and wet on Joe’s hands from the two they couldn’t save. _Me and Book are going back to Belfast. You - both of you need to get away from… Just away._

Kauai is pretty far away, that’s for damn sure, on the flimsy excuse of explosives and demolition tutelage under the guidance of Andy’s “old friends”. They’ve been here four months, living on top of each other in a rusting trailer in the backyard of Barry’s off-the-grid shack, though it could be four years or four decades for how amputated they feel: the news coming through patchy and late, the weather never anything more or less than balmy with a high chance of rain. 

Over the crest of the ridge he picks up one of the little tributaries leading down to the Kalalau stream, follows that with his focus on negotiating the slippery loose rocks and not on everything else buzzing inside his skull. There’s a strong breeze from the northeast and the swell looks good, long unbroken lines of churning white waves charging towards the island. He wishes he had Brenda’s surfboard. 

He almost has to surf anyway past the splashy Ho’ole’a Falls, descending sideways to keep his feet under him, but then there’s golden sand and the ocean roaring blue and wide in front of him, sky clotted with heavy incoming clouds, and Joe takes a shallow breath through his nose, scents salt and rain and green things. He grew up half on the waves - him and Nicky both, children unknown to each other on opposite sides of the same water - and there’s a fraught kind of comfort to be found in the rhythmic violence of the waves even now, after all they’ve seen and done at sea, after all that it’s taken from them. 

The sand is wet but Joe plops down regardless. Legs stretched out long and pants sucking up moisture, the wind tugs at his curls now that they’ve grown out a bit. It stings his eyes, which is little more than an excuse for tears to brim. He blinks until they fall, each one a thought, a yearning, an anxiety: for Nicky, for Andy and Booker, for the state of the world and all the thousands of desperately needy people in it. For himself, too, for the long years of war and bloodshed and pain. 

Yet as the minutes pass, and the waves crash onto the shore, and the wind dries his cheeks drop by drop, all the churning frustration and worry and heartache roiling up his gullet slowly ebbs back down, calms to a simmer under his diaphragm. He can finally breathe deep into the cavern of his lungs, and on the exhale his shoulders unknot for the first time in weeks. 

“Rain’s coming,” he murmurs out of habit, ever the spotter: he and Nicky haven’t spent a moment apart since they got here - probably further back than that, to be honest - and he feels the absence keenly, no matter how fleeting. The wind turns colder as the clouds blot out the sun. Joe shivers. From behind his bent knees he watches the rain arrive, a grey shade drifting over the waves and up the sand. 

December rain: not as warm as in summer, but still much more pleasant than any wintry drizzle on the mainland. Joe tips his head back to catch it full in the face. It trickles through his beard, drips from the tip of his nose. His tongues swipes across his lips to taste it. 

Though not a heavy shower, his shirt is nevertheless soaked in less than a minute. He can well picture Nicky’s exasperated smile, hands on hips, his affectionate admonishment like an old grandmother to “get out of the rain, Joe, before you catch your death,” which never fails to make Joe laugh. 

He misses Nicky. 

Absurd, of course, since Joe has only been gone for an hour, tops, and they have been joined at the hip for months, but Joe has always been absurd when it comes to Nicky, perhaps because Nicky is the only thing that has consistently made sense all this time. 

Standing, Joe turns his back on the open ocean. The clouds have beheaded the island’s peak above the sharp vertical folds of the green na pali with their hidden streams and twisting gulleys. His tracks have long since vanished from the sand, but that’s of no consequence, as a figure is planting new footsteps on a trajectory to meet him. 

After all this time, Joe’s heart still misses a beat. 

Nicky closes in, hair plastered to his head, shirt sopping wet and clinging to his broad shoulders. His eyes crinkle at their corners as he stops two feet from Joe. “You’ll catch your death,” he says over the sussuration of the rain. 

Joe laughs, and shakes his head. Looks up through his eyelashes at Nicky. “And you? You’re no less wet than me.” 

Plucking at the drenched hem of his shirt, Nicky nods once. “It’s too late for us both, then,” he says. He holds out a hand, rain dripping from his fingertips, for Joe to take. “Come with me.” 

“Anywhere,” Joe breathes. Nicky smiles the smile he reserves just for Joe. 

Kalalau beach isn’t all that big, and they walk to the western curve in silence, hands entwined and swinging between them. They pause there, Nicky staring at the clouds marching across the ocean, Joe staring at Nicky. When Nicky turns his head, he smiles to be the centre of Joe’s attention, and Joe really can’t help himself: he closes the foot of space between them, tips Nicky’s face with one finger at his jaw and, to the sounds of the crashing waves, kisses him. 

Nicky sighs, angling his whole body towards Joe like a flower following the sun. His free hand runs up Joe’s shoulder and into the wet curls spilling around Joe’s neck. Their joined hands, chilled in the downpour, he pulls to their warmer chests, pressed between their beating hearts. The rain keeps falling and Joe closes his eyes, stretches out his other senses as Nicky kisses over his face, seemingly at random, butterfly kisses like the swift glow of embers across Joe’s nose and cheeks until he realises Nicky is kissing away drops of rain. 

On a shaky breath, Joe presses their foreheads together, wrapping his hand around the back of Nicky’s neck where water is dribbling down from his hair. Their breaths mingle between them, a tingle of heat against kiss-stung lips. He thinks he might be crying again. 

“Do you remember Gansu Province?” Nicky whispers. 

Joe pauses. Says carefully, “Which time?” 

Nicky smiles at him, an aching tender thing. “The last time.” 

1959\. Trying to help during the famine, as a break from warfare in Vietnam. “I remember,” Joe says, neutral, because he remembers Nicky wanting to stay despite the authorities honing in on two foreigners making themselves abundantly visible, and he remembers the protracted arguments they had about it, and he remembers having to physically drag Nicky out of Linxia when they cut it too close. 

Nicky strokes Joe’s beard. “I was very angry at you.” 

“An understatement.” Nicky’s wrath had been glacial, ice-sharp and brutally cold, a heavy implacable weight crushing everything in its path. 

“I saw the error of my ways,” Nicky says. His eyes flick up from their study of Joe’s lips to hold Joe’s gaze. Joe’s breath catches in his chest. “You were so patient. You waited for me to realise, and to be thankful for what you did.” He cups Joe’s cheek, presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “I’m here,” Nicky murmurs. He kisses again, the same corner. “I’m here.” 

On the third kiss, Joe turns his head to capture Nicky’s lips properly, and they take a synchronised breath. The rain is still coming down, slicking their lips sliding cool and wet together. Joe skates his free hand over the front of Nicky’s clinging shirt. His palm grinds against Nicky’s nipple, pebbled in the cold, and Joe breaks the kiss to look down. The material has turned translucent, both pink hard nubs jutting out obscenely. When he pinches it between thumb and forefinger, Nicky hisses. 

Joe tsks. “You’ll catch your death in a wet shirt,” he says. 

Blinking, beads of rain in his eyelashes, Nicky licks his bottom lip in a move so unconsciously sexy that Joe groans high in his throat. “You’re right,” Nicky says. He lets go of Joe’s hand to undo his top button. 

Joe swallows hard, says, “Sensible,” in a voice gone hoarse. 

He works from the bottom up, fighting the slippery plastic buttons and the sodden cotton until their hands meet in the middle. Clear rivulets course down Nicky’s bared chest. Leaving Nicky to wrestle the shirt off his arms, Joe follows a flowing stream from the crook of Nicky’s neck first with his eyes, then with his tongue. He licks over the hard wings of Nicky’s collar bones to his sternum, bending awkwardly in half to detour left, tonguing Nicky’s rigid nipple into his mouth. Nicky’s chest heaves, both hands sinking into Joe’s curls. Joe laves over that nub, tracing hot circles with the pointed end of his tongue, flicking it and nipping it and sucking hard enough to hurt but Nicky doesn’t shy away. 

Joe lowers himself to his knees in the cold wet sand. Hands on Nicky’s hips, the rain makes it impossible to look up at him, so Joe closes his eyes again, hones his focus on the other senses: the smell of Nicky, wet cotton and rain; skin pulsing heat against Joe’s fingers; clutch of his hands in Joe’s hair as Joe licks another sluicing river down from Nicky’s sternum to his belly. He circles his navel, dips inside with the tip of his tongue, then bites at the rim and tugs. 

“God,” Nicky chokes, bending over Joe, a little shelter from the rain. 

Waterlogged, Nicky’s threadbare cargo pants sag low on his hips. Joe nibbles down the line of brown hair from his navel to the sodden waistband. Then, forehead resting on Nicky’s belly, Joe fumbles the button fly open, fingers pruning in the rain and beginning to go numb. Nicky’s not wearing underwear, and his cock spills out of his fly, hot and ruddy and halfway hard just from this. He hisses when Joe touches him, hips flinching back from the cold on sensitive skin. Joe kisses his cockhead in apology. Licks the floppy foreskin tip, salt and musk and rain, then takes him gently into his mouth. 

Nicky straightens to his full height with a slow thrust of his pelvis. Sighing, Joe cradles Nicky’s cock on his tongue, suckles softly as it thickens. He’s shivering, he realises distantly, fingers massaging into the meat of Nicky’s thick thighs to chase the warmth, dick trying to plump up in his cold wet pants, but his own pleasure seems indistinct, secondary to the taste of Nicky in his mouth, the heat and weight of him. Nicky’s always been a leaker, and he rewards Joe now with a blurt of precome, more following as Joe laps it up, and Nicky swells that last bit to fill Joe’s mouth completely. 

Joe slides his palms over the globes of Nicky’s ass and pulls him in even as he sucks his way down, rain-slick lips gradually warming on Nicky’s hot flesh with the friction that grows every time Joe pulls up to tongue the head, slides down again to swallow around him. Nicky rocks his hips just enough to nudge the back of Joe’s fluttering throat. His hands skim over Joe’s face, swiping away the rain, pushing wet curls off Joe’s forehead, hovering there to shelter so Joe can blink up at Nicky looking down at him with red-rimmed eyes and a soft smile that makes Joe’s heart hurt. It’s too much, Nicky inside his mouth and inside his chest and inside his head; Joe closes his eyes again and suckles Nicky’s cock deeper, listens for the ways that Nicky talks to him without sight or sound: gentle flex of his thighs, salt tang of his precome pulsing on Joe’s tongue, hands cupped above Joe’s eyebrows to block the rain. 

It takes time, the both of them shivering as the heat of arousal battles the cool of the rain, but Joe’s in no hurry, sucks languidly, almost lazily, using none of the tricks that he has memorised like passwords to unlock Nicky, just holds his cock in his mouth, swallowing the steady drip of precome until Nicky unspools in salty waves, and he swallows that too, thick in his throat and bubbling at the corners of his lips. 

Nicky slips from his lips, connected by a strand of come-white spit before it breaks as Nicky kneels, knee to knee with Joe, pulls Joe in with the hands buried in his hair, and kisses him. The musky flavour disseminates between them as Nicky licks into Joe’s tired mouth, cradling his jaw, while Joe paws at Nicky’s hips, his thighs, with cold fingers. When Nicky strokes over Joe’s wet chest, his pebbled nipples and shivering belly, to cup between his legs, he stops their kiss to blink at Joe. 

“No?” 

Joe blinks back, fuzzy. “Too cold.” 

Nicky laughs softly, and kisses Joe again. “What do I always say?” He tucks his cock back into his pants, wincing at the chilled cotton, then stands with more stability than Joe manages a second later, but Nicky steadies him. “Let’s see what a hot shower does for you,” he says. He takes Joe’s hand, chafes some warmth into, and tugs him in the direction of Barry’s shack with his wet shirt hanging from the waist of his pants like a tail. 

“You say ‘hot’,” Joe grumbles, just to hear Nicky laugh. 

“Lukewarm, then.” 

As suddenly as the rain began, it fizzles to an end just as fast. Joe stops at the threshold of sand and grass at the touch of the sun, turns his face to feel its heat on his skin. Eyes closed, grip on Nicky firm, he says, “I’m sorry I nearly blew us up.” 

Nicky’s forehead thunks down on Joe’s shoulder. “Oh beloved,” he sighs, and his thumb rubs warmth into the back of Joe’s hand. Acceptance and absolution, unconditional and infinite. 

They stand there for a long time, side by side, until Joe's shirt has all but dried.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is it a motif when the author only lets one character come at a time?


	3. A South Korean Hotel, December 2007

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 7\. Accidental stimulation // glory hole // **massage**  
>  8\. ~~Breast worship // pegging // choking~~ **Masturbation // simultaneous orgasms**  
>  9\. Cock worship // **handjobs** // medical kink  
> 10\. Sex work // **aphrodisiacs** // impact play

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't like the prompts for #8 so I took the remaining prompts from #6 instead.

#### Taean, South Korea - December, 2007

Nicky’s just coming out of the bathroom in a cloud of steam with nothing but a towel wrapped around his hips, all slick wet hair and flushed skin, when Joe gets back to the hotel room. Normally Joe would set about taking advantage of the situation, but he’s been out on the tidal flats since dawn with the locals, slopping up buckets of thick crude oil bleeding from the Hebei Spirit five miles off-shore. Now he has the mother of all headaches from constant exposure to the fumes, and he’s sticky with polluted seawater and sweat. 

“I left plenty of hot water for you,” Nicky says as he shrugs on a clean t-shirt, the cotton sticking in dark patches where he hasn’t dried himself. 

“Thanks,” Joe says. He’s still standing stupidly just inside the door, head throbbing, watching blankly as Nicky steps into his jeans. 

Muffled inside his hoodie, Nicky asks, “Did you eat yet?” His head pops through the neck hole. “Joe?” 

Joe shrugs. “Someone brought dumplings.” He ate a few before the chemical stench made him too queasy. Nicky approaches him hands outstretched, grasping Joe’s forearms and tugging him away from the door and fully into the room. “You’ve just showered,” Joe protests; despite wearing protection, he’s still somehow stained in brown splotches. 

“Hush,” Nicky says. He leads Joe to the steamy bathroom, fragrant with shampoo and body wash and clean, wet Nicky: as refreshing to Joe’s abused nose as a clear mountain breeze. “Shower. I’ll be back soon.” He lands a quick kiss on Joe’s cheek, then pulls a face at the foul film it leaves on his lips. “Shower well,” he grouses. Joe smiles wanly. 

Joe undresses and dumps his clothes on the oil-ruined pile that’s been growing in the corner these last three days, then steps into the shower cubicle to be embraced by its cloudy heat. Under the steady rain, the stress of labour melts from his muscles, and his headache finally fades as the fumes are washed away. He spares a thought for all the thousands of people who toiled alongside him today, villagers and soldiers and fishermen, who don’t have the luxury of spontaneously healing any damage caused, and counts his blessings. 

But for all the inexplicable wonder of feeling his aches and pains disappear like they were never there, Joe is still _tired_. He washes as thoroughly as he can, scrubbing at the stains in his skin until the water begins to lose its heat, and that uses up the last of his energy. A perfunctory pat of the towel is about all he can manage to dry himself, then he wraps it around his waist and shuffles into the bedroom. 

Nicky’s back already, stripping out of his hoodie and t-shirt when Joe emerges in his own puff of steam. He smiles at Joe. “Better now?” 

“Much, thanks.” Sighing, Joe sits on the edge of the bed, back bowed and shoulders slumped. Four long, exhausting days scooping up crude oil, every returning tide bringing in more. A night’s sleep and they’ll be out again tomorrow. Joe’s eyelids droop closed without conscious will. 

A calming soundtrack, the noises that Nicky makes: denim jeans sliding off long legs, bare feet padding over rough carpet, the rustling of a plastic bag, glass bottles clinking. The mattress squeaks as he kneel-walks across it. His hand is hot and dry on Joe’s damp shoulder. Murmured softly: “Are you asleep sitting up?” 

Joe smiles. “Maybe,” he says, but opens his eyes. In front of him is a mirror where reflected Nicky peers at Joe over reflected Joe’s shoulder. “I am dreaming about a gorgeous man in my bed.” 

“Ha. Sweet talker,” says Nicky. He drops a kiss on the curve of Joe’s neck, then licks his lips. “Much better,” he says approvingly. 

Something smooth and hard and almost flesh-warm nudges at the base Joe’s spine where his towel has draped low and loose. Eyebrows lifting, he catches Nicky’s gaze in the mirror, says, “Are you happy to see me?” with a saucy wink. 

Nicky laughs into Joe’s trapezius, then rests his chin there, smiles at Joe’s reflection. “I am always happy to see you, yes.” Over Joe’s other shoulder, he passes Joe a small glass bottle; inside is a stringy ginseng root suspended in golden soju liquor. 

“Insamju?” Joe asks. 

“A gift from the manager’s mother. Do you remember when we first had it?” 

Chewing his lip, Joe weighs the bottle in his hand as he casts his mind back. “Early fifteenth century.” A blurry night, laughter and kisses behind closed doors, drinking the ‘special present’ from Kim Mun-gi. He twists off the cap and holds it to his nose: light and fragrant and sweet. “This is good stuff.” 

“Homemade,” Nicky murmurs. He sits with his bare knees either side of Joe’s hips, big hands stroking over Joe’s shoulders. “She told me to make sure my nice friend has a relaxing night since he’s been helping so much.” His thumbs press into the muscle either side of Joe’s neck. Joe groans. “Drink up, amore mio,” Nicky says. 

Joe knocks back a healthy shot straight from the bottle - they hadn’t had glasses the first time, either - then passes it to Nicky. Joe watches the bob of his throat in the mirror as Nicky swallows. Their fingers catch as Nicky hands the bottle back, and Joe gulps down the last mouthful. It’s, frankly, a waste of good liquor, but Joe’s not in the mood to savour a drink. 

Chin digging into Joe’s shoulder, Nicky smiles at Joe in the mirror. Then, without warning, thick knuckles run parallel lines up either side of Joe’s spine in a move that has him arching his back, mouth falling open with a grunt of pleasure. “Yes?” Nicky asks. 

“Yeah, yes, Nicky,” Joe groans. 

Nicky has strong hands and he uses them to take Joe apart piece by piece. From the base of Joe’s skull, he thumbs firm, tight circles heading out towards Joe’s shoulders. Joe drops his head forward, stretching out the muscles for Nicky’s touch, skin tingling in anticipation. Nicky winds his way in to Joe’s vertebrae, then back out again, before nudging Joe to lean forward so Nicky can access his whole back. He works the heels down either side of Joe’s spine, and Joe shivers, but not from cold. Nicky’s hands are so warm, calluses rasping over Joe’s bare skin. Lust washes through him, a tingle in his neck, his chest, his belly; every touch from Nicky makes his cock twitch beneath the damp towel. 

The alcohol has hit his mostly empty stomach; Joe’s brain is blurring. Combined with Nicky’s magic touch, Joe turns very quickly loose-limbed and pliant. Heat swells outward from Joe’s belly like the oncoming tide, waves lapping up his ribs and across his shoulder blades, through his pelvis and down his thighs. He sighs, eyes closing, and slumps back into Nicky’s chest. Two long arms wrap around Joe, clutching him close. Nicky kneads the heels of his palms into Joe’s pectorals, firm little circles mirroring each other, mirrored again in their reflection opposite. Joe keeps his eyes closed, the better to appreciate Nicky’s warm clean skin and the heat pulsing at Joe’s core. 

Loosened by a wave of ginseng and alcohol, Joe’s head lolls backwards to rest on Nicky’s shoulder, rolling sideways enough that he can tuck into the curve of Nicky’s throat where he smells divine. His stubble prickles against Joe’s flushed skin. Callused thumbs press firm lines along the lengths of Joe’s collarbones, over and over again, digging in at the sternum and pulling in long stretches to the tips. Joe is hyper aware of all of Nicky’s fingers splayed across his chest, eight points of heat and pressure spaced wide from his pecs to the top of his abs. 

Joe’s towel has long since slipped open, so there’s little to hide his cock as it twitches and fills, rising ruddy and sensitive from his curls. Joe flexes his fingers where they rest on his thighs. “Nicky,” he murmurs. Receives a wet kiss with teeth to the meat of his neck. 

“Touch yourself, Joe,” Nicky rasps. 

Whining, Joe wraps a hand around his cock, too dry and too rough. Nicky reaches down, grabs Joe’s wrist and brings it up to his mouth, licks hot wet streaks across the palm while Joe watches and pants, mouth agape. This time there’s spit to ease the friction, and in seconds Joe is thrusting into his fist, hindered little hitches of his hips as he pumps his cock. 

Nicky’s hands stroke across his whole body, long sweeps that catch at his nipples, that knock his towel aside, that slide down his ribs and over his quads, that skirt up his inner thigh and brush past his balls. Moans fall from Joe’s mouth, half-formed pleas in English and Korean, in Italian and Arabic. Nicky shuffles forward on his knees until they are flush together and Joe can feel the blood-hot steel of Nicky’s cock twitching against his spine. 

“Joe, Joe,” Nicky gasps. 

Joe groans, “Let me, let me, fuck, Nicky.” He twists an arm behind him, fumbles blind and off-hand to grip Nicky, upside down and with no space between them the way Nicky is wrapped around Joe, but he manages, gets the heft of Nicky’s cock in his palm, already sticky with precome the way Nicky leaks. 

Nicky bucks forward, cockhead kissing the small of Joe’s back, arms crossed over Joe’s chest, hands tucked into Joe’s pits and thumbing the sensitive creases where arms meets torso. Breath cascading hot and fast over Joe’s neck, Nicky mouths any skin he can reach, the both of them beading with sweat as they drive each other wild. 

It’s almost impossible for Joe to focus beyond the dizzy glow - of the alcohol, the ginseng, and the arousal combined - to synchronise his hands: the one on his cock trying to go faster than the one behind him grasping at Nicky can manage. His orgasm bubbles in his groin and in his thighs, simmering in the bone. He bites his lip, his head thrown back, hand jerking his own cock in squeezing pulses, his other arm twisted behind him and his grip on Nicky going weak every time he gets distracted, pleasure sizzling out from his dick and burning every place that Nicky is touching. Nicky doesn’t seem to care that Joe’s attention is divided, panting into Joe’s hair and jolting his hips so his foreskin drags slick and hot against Joe’s back with every forward thrust, skidding in the growing sweat. 

“Look at us,” Nicky pants in Joe’s ear. “Beloved, look.” 

Head tilted back, Joe cracks his eyes open to see himself in the mirror, obscene arch of his body, fist blurring over his cock, his throat stretched out and vulnerable, angled for Nicky to bury his mouth there, sucking the flesh between his teeth. It’s the bite that sends Joe moaning over the edge, his legs falling wide open and his pelvis rocking up into it, totally exposed, everything offered up to Nicky’s hungry eyes. 

“God, Joe,” Nicky chokes, swelling in Joe’s twitching fingers, and spurts over Joe’s back in wet splashes, groaning into the meat of Joe’s shoulder. 

Joe shudders with the last ebb of his orgasm trickling across his fingers. He flinches when he lets go of his cock, and can only watch, panting in dazed arousal, as Nicky pulls his hand up and sucks his fingers into his mouth, laving the come from his skin with greedy licks. Joe’s balls hurt with the surge of desire that lances through him. He whimpers, a sound quickly swallowed by Nicky as he switches target, devouring Joe’s lips with his own. Nicky’s spent cock twitches against Joe’s spine as they kiss and kiss and kiss. 

Sweaty as they are, they rapidly cool to the point of shivering together anywhere they aren’t touching. “Another shower?” Nicky murmurs. 

“Hmpf,” Joe grunts. “Too much effort.” He uses the towel to mop up the strings of come across his belly and groin, then shifts to free enough towel that Nicky can wipe the mess over his back. After, they crawl under the covers, curling around each other like always. 

Nicky kisses Joe’s palm before he lays it flat on his chest again. “Do you feel rewarded, my love?” 

“Mm, very,” Joe mumbles, half way to sleep. “It was good liqueur.” 

Nicky laughs.


	4. A London Doctor's Office, January 1881

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 11\. **Overstimulation** // bukakke // fucking machines  
> 12\. Glove kink // **biting** or hickeys // **dacryphilia** (sort of)  
> 13\. **Anal** // **sex toys** // feet  
> 14\. **Masochism** (sort of) // **hair-pulling** (sort of) // orgy  
> 15\. **Ass worship** // double penetration // **spanking** (blink and you miss it)

#### London, United Kingdom - January, 1881

During daylight hours, Dr Nicolò Parodi of Genoa enters through the front door of Dr Granville’s clinic as a welcomed visitor and fellow medical practitioner eager to learn about “advanced English medicine”, said accompanied by the wide innocent eyes that have beguiled prison guards, police officers, politicians and, recently, the German Emperor Wilhelm I. During daylight hours, Dr Nicolò Parodi of Genoa listens and watches, studies and assists, as Dr Granville explains his patient diagnoses and treatment protocols. During daylight hours, Dr Nicolò Parodi of Genoa is a learnèd scholar, a trustworthy colleague, a model citizen.

It is not daylight hours.

Nicky is not using the front door.

And he is not alone.

“These locks are ridiculous,” Joe says, breath a white mist on the air as he climbs in through the window from the back courtyard into the dark interior. “Any child could jimmy them open in seconds.”

“Many do,” Nicky points out. He hops over the sill behind Joe, landing on the balls of his feet, ears pricked for any untoward noise. The Granvilles left for a weekend Brighton vacation this afternoon and took the servants with them; the building _should_ be empty and silent.

No sign or sound of anyone coming. Nicky’s shoulders relax and he smiles reassurance at Joe.

The window slides down on greased rails, cutting off the bitter night air. Dark and quiet, the interior carries a trace of warmth from the day’s fire, its embers still glittering in the hearth. Nicky pads through the room using sense memory more than sight to skirt around the shadowy furniture. Dr Granville keeps spare candles and matches in his desk drawer, and Nicky needs _some_ light for what he’s planning to do.

The thought makes his mouth twitch.

Behind him, the heavy velvet curtain drops to the floor, plunging the room into utter blackness. He fumbles the drawer open, finds the rattling box of matches by touch, strikes a quick flame that flickers whimsically. Joe uses its dancing light to navigate the room. He appears at Nicky’s side, silent as a ghost, plucking a candle from the drawer and holding it steady for Nicky to light the wick just as the match burns down to skin. Nicky drops it with a hiss, sucking his fingers for the few seconds it takes for them to heal.

Candle held to one side, Joe grasps Nicky’s injured hand, tugs it so Nicky’s fingers _pop_ from his lips, and sucks them into the wet heat of his own mouth. Nicky’s breath catches. Has he ever seen a sight so beautiful as Joe? Lit in shades of flame-gold, the light of the fire glitters in his eyes as he looks back at Nicky, warm and soft and loving and _knowing_ , shiny lips parted around Nicky’s fingers even though the pain vanished almost as soon as it registered.

He pulls off, slowly, a long draw of his mouth up the length of Nicky’s fingers, hot flick of tongue at the end like a promise. The smile he gives Nicky is equal parts adoring and wicked. “Better?”

Nicky can’t even wait to catch his breath. He crashes into Joe mouth to mouth, thrusts his tongue into that dark wet heat as his hands clutch at Joe’s shoulders, the side of his neck, his jaw, his hair. It’s been weeks since they’ve had the time to do anything more than kiss in parting. He’s making hungry noises, snatching air in pieces, presses Joe back against the desk and leans on him, thigh inching between Joe’s legs and Joe, grunting low in his throat with his fingers digging into the meat of Nicky’s ass, only opens his mouth wider. God, Nicky wants to eat him up right here, get his mouth on Joe’s cock and swallow him down -

But no - no, Nicky had a plan. _Has_ a plan, formulated over the long days Nicky has spent reconnoitring here while Joe has dashed from one London party to another, charming every member of the gentry into giving up their secrets, building up a picture of the web of aristocracy. Their hours have sundered, Nicky starting the day before the dawn chorus, Joe up late and out late, both of them too busy to share more than fleeting kisses as they pass like ships in the night. Finally, they’ve got time, and Nicky is going to make maximum use of it.

It’ll be worth the delay in gratification now.

The slick sound their mouths make when he breaks their kiss sorely tests his resolve, however. Still leaning over Joe, probably crushing Dr Granville’s papers and journals in their piles on the desk, Nicky rests his forehead on Joe’s shoulder and breathes. Joe noses at Nicky’s ear, mouthing at the lobe. Nicky shudders.

“Joe,” he warns at the first flash of Joe’s teeth against his throat.

Joe chuckles darkly. “Sorry.” His fingers flex on Nicky’s ass. “Can’t help it.”

Groaning, Nicky lets his hips rock forward once, just for the sharp spike of pleasure that zings through him and the way Joe’s head lolls back, breath shivering out of him with a hint of a whine at the end. Then, with superhuman strength of will, Nicky plants his hands on the oak desk and pushes himself upright.

Joe lounges there, legs spread and chest heaving, dark eyes inviting all manner of sin.

Sternly, Nicky reminds himself of his plan.

He takes the lit candle - still upright in Joe’s hand despite their distraction; Nicky flashes him a grateful smile - and steps back, trusting that Joe will follow him into the shadows.

Joe groans, sits up from his sprawl on the desk, and rubs his palms across his face. He’s wearing an indulgent grin when he looks at Nicky again. “You said you wanted to give me the tour.”

“I did,” Nicky agrees. He holds out a hand and Joe, of course, takes it. Nicky urges him off the desk, pulls him in close.

“So, Mister Parodi,” Joe says, chin on Nicky’s shoulder, his body a firm line of warmth down Nicky’s side. “Show me your world.”

“That’s _Doctor_ Parodi,” Nicky corrects distractedly; there’s hot wax oozing towards his fingers and, seeing how the last burn nearly derailed the entire night, he makes quick work of locating a candle holder on the mantelpiece next to the desk.

The smile is audible in Joe’s voice: “Is this where you work, _doctor _?"__

“This is actually the good Dr Granville’s desk.” Nicky swipes a finger along the varnished oak, rustling a few of the papers they’ve knocked askew. He glances over his shoulder, looking at Joe through his lashes in a way he perfected eight hundred years ago, says demurely, “I am but a humble observer.”

Joe wets his lips, eyes grown huge and hollow with hunger. The air between them is humid, thick enough to slice.

Nicky makes himself move, candle in front like a will-o’-the-wisp, pulling Joe with him along the edge of the room. “This is where I sit,” he murmurs with a nod at a low armchair on the other side of the fireplace, its rich upholstery leeched of colour by the dark hour. “It allows me a good view.”

“Good view of what?” Joe asks, turning. Nicky follows him, lifting the candle to cast its light over the table that dominates the centre of the room, draped in a white cotton sheet for protection. “Ohhh.” Joe shoots a sly look at Nicky. “This is where the magic happens?”

Nicky's smile sidles towards impish. “Come get comfortable,” he says, and tugs Joe across the room.

Next to the table sits a big square box housing a wet battery. On it, candlelight gleaming off the metal handle, is Granville’s revolutionary invention.

“Oh, I’ve heard about this,” Joe murmurs. He strokes the cool surface with his finger. “A percussor. It’s the talk of London. I’ve heard it’s a miracle cure.”

“Mm,” says Nicky. Depositing the candle on the side-table, Nicky bends to connect the wires into the battery.

Joe picks up the percussor and, after a bit of fiddling, switches it on. “Ah!” It buzzes to life, surprisingly loud, shuddering in Joe’s hand until Nicky dials it down. “Huh.” Joe looks sidelong at Nicky. “I’ve heard other rumours about machines like this.”

Straight-faced, Nicky replies, “Dr Granville is a medical professional. He only ever uses this machine in the proper treatment of his patients.”

Joe waits him out.

Nicky grins. “I, on the other hand -"

“Are incorrigible,” Joe finishes, and kisses him. The percussor, pinned between their chests, catches against Nicky’s nipple in a way that sparks like electricity through his veins. He gasps into Joe’s mouth and presses harder into the vibrations. Joe pulls back, a question in the line of his brow, and moves the percussor across Nicky’s chest to the other side. “Yes?”

“Yes, yes, please.” Nicky moans, skin aching with how it prickles and puckers under the sensation, even through his shirt and vest. Pleasure dances along his nerves. He’s already hard in his drawers and starting to leak, wet and messy like he always does.

Joe, ever sensitive to Nicky’s desires, circles the percussor around and around in looping orbits. Nicky watches the winding path with dazed arousal.

“Does it feel good, my heart?” Joe murmurs.

“Yes, so good.”

Joe presses the percussor to one nipple and uses his hand on the other, pinching and flicking the raised nub through Nicky’s clothing. “Better than this?”

“Mother of God,” Nicky groans. His cock throbs between his thighs. In desperation, he grabs Joe by the face and hauls him in for a filthy kiss, tongues sliding together, spit trailing from their mouths. Joe backs Nicky against the table, urging him up to sit on it. Nicky’s balls ache where they press against the firm surface. His hips hitch forwards. “Joe, please, please,” he moans.

Joe manages to open two buttons of Nicky’s shirt, enough to slip his hand inside. He pinches the nipple between thumb and forefinger, holding it taught, and then runs the head of the percussor over it with merciless pressure. Nicky chokes on a wail as lightning strikes through him.

Grinning wolfishly, Joe says like he’s commenting on the weather, “If that feels so good, I wonder where else might feel better?”

The percussor travels down over Nicky’s belly, pausing at his belt. Waves of vibration roll across Nicky’s body. He licks his lips, dry-mouthed with anticipation, as hungry as the look in Joe’s eye.

And then Joe moves his arm, and Nicky’s whole world narrows to a pinprick, to the explosion of pleasure cresting outward from his weeping cock making his drawers slick with precome. Savagely he bites his lip. His eyes slam shut and all he can feel is what Joe is doing to him, the percussor tapping a rapid rhythm along his shaft, down towards the root where his balls have drawn up tight, then up to his drooling cockhead.

“Nicolò, look at me,” Joe murmurs. Nicky forces his eyes open, looks at Joe watching him with naked desire on his face just as the percussor dances across his frenulum, and even through two layers of clothing it’s enough to launch Nicky into orgasm. The waves pulse through him like a rising tide and his balls _hurt_. Hips jolting enough to shake the table, he throws himself forward against Joe’s body, sinks his teeth into his chest and keens.

Joe knows him well enough to pull the percussor away just at the point where it’s becoming too much. Nicky goes slack with the loss of pleasure-tension but Joe is there to steady him. He switches off the percussor, drops it with a clatter on top of the battery box. The silence of the room is broken only by the sound of Nicky panting.

A kiss to the crown of his head, a hand stroking through the long strands of his hair. Joe says softly, “My love?"

Nicky presses a reciprocal kiss over Joe’s beating heart before he sits upright. “That was not part of my plan,” he says, aiming for droll but the effect ruined by his laboured breath.

Joe grins. “You have excellent plans. I am more than happy to be subjected to them.”

He can’t help but melt. Nicky wraps both arms around Joe’s shoulders and pulls him close for a kiss. His whole body tingles with the after-effects of orgasm, balancing on the cusp of falling asleep or rousing for more.

Joe strokes his hands up Nicky’s thighs, from his knees to his hips, thumbs a sensual pressure at Nicky’s groin, and that tips the balance.

Pushing Joe back, Nicky looks him up and down with intent. Joe laughs and starts to strip, which in these days of complicated European fashion is an ordeal enough that Nicky misses the Middle East: there is a lot to be said for the convenience of a _kandoora_.

He undresses himself more sedately, languorous in the afterglow, while Joe flings starched cuffs and collar to the ground in his haste. Nicky is only down to his vest and still in his trousers and shoes by the time Joe has stripped to his fine wool underwear, tented at the front. Nicky tugs at the ribbon, tied in a bow like a gift, until it comes loose. Joe rocks his weight an inch left, an inch right, shifting the drawers over his hips, his thighs, to puddle at his feet.

As ever, the sight of his cock standing proud of his curls, flushed deep red and just beginning to glisten at the tip, makes Nicky’s mouth water.

Eagerly, Joe grabs the percussor and thrusts it at Nicky, then clambers on the table with none of the grace Nicky knows he possesses.

“So avid,” Nicky murmurs.

Joe grins, breathless and unrepentant. “Do your worst."

Nicky starts the percussor. Its loud buzz fills the room. On the table, Joe shivers with anticipation, cock twitching in its lean. Lightly, Nicky presses the percussor against Joe’s belly. Waits for Joe’s nod before he strokes the instrument in a small circle, keeping the pressure gentle, winding slowly wider on each pass until each circuit takes him in loops over Joe’s flanks.

Spreading his legs, Joe whines a plaintive, “Nicolò.”

“Impatient.”

Joe widens his eyes until they glisten in the candlelight, dark and round and pleading. “It’s been so long since I felt your touch on me.”

Nicky gives Joe a measured look. “But I’m _not_ touching you,” he says, and applies the percussor to the root of Joe’s cock.

The reaction is instantaneous: both hands gripping the edges of the table, Joe’s hips lift in a high arch, mouth opening on a punched-out shout.

Nicky pulls the percussor away.

__“No no no, Nicky, Nicolò, my love, please, please -”__

“Breathe, Yusuf."

A loud, shallow breath. Joe’s eyes are wild when he finds Nicky’s in the low light, studying him with careful intensity. Joe blinks - and grins.

The smile comes slower for Nicky, but all the more wicked. “More?”

Wriggling his shoulders, Joe settles himself comfortably on the table. “Don’t stop."

“As you wish,” Nicky murmurs. Arm braced over Joe’s hips to keep him down, Nicky presses the buzzing percussor back against Joe’s cock. Joe writhes, heels banging on the table, mouth falling wide open, breath a hitch in his lungs. Nicky manoeuvres the machine along the throbbing vein on the underside, down to the base of Joe’s dick, then up to the head, while Joe moans continuously, pelvis hitching hard against Nicky’s restraint. He’s spiralling up fast to orgasm, will get there in less than a minute if Nicky keeps doing what he’s doing, but Joe instructed Nicky to do his _worst_ , and Nicky has a hunger for a lot more than just this.

Joe wails when the vibrations disappear again, staring at Nicky with disbelief, betrayal even, his whole body shivering on the edge of release. Nicky raises his eyebrows mildly, lips quirking just at the corners.

“I have a plan,” he says.

“Of course you do,” Joe replies on a breathless laugh. The tension ebbs slowly from his muscles as the pleasure fades.

Nicky strokes his thigh, tugs a little until they spread wider. Cupping Joe’s heavy balls, he lifts them up, revealing the secret stretch of skin behind, which he brushes with the pad of his thumb. Joe’s cock twitches.

“Ready?” Nicky asks.

Joe takes a shuddering breath. His legs are shaking. “Do it.”

So Nicky does, resting the percussor over Joe’s perineum, watching avidly for the reaction.

The reaction doesn’t come. Nor does Joe.

“Huh,” Joe says. He frowns, and shifts his hips, while the percussor taps its staccato rhythm.

Nicky eases it off him. “No?”

“No, put it back,” Joe says. His eyes are thoughtful on the shadowed ceiling as Nicky complies. “Maybe a little harder. And further down?” So Nicky does, and waits, the nerves in his fingers tingling with the ongoing vibrations.

The change comes over Joe slowly. A gradual rise in the tension of his muscles. His legs spreading further apart of their own volition. Pelvis canting up, rocking in little aborted thrusts. His balls draw upwards, cock flushing darker. Normally Joe is loud and uninhibited in sex, but his teeth are sunk into his bottom lip. Short gasps punctuate the noisy buzz.

Nicky knows all these signs, yet it is still a surprise when Joe begins to leak from his cockhead, long pearl-white globs of come dripping from his slit to his belly. There’s none of Joe’s usual thrusts, no shout of Nicky’s name. Just pulse after pulse of come, and a steady growing puddle.

After a minute of this, Nicky pulls away, frowning. Joe’s head lifts off the table. “No, my love, please.”

“But you came?” It’s impossible to miss that Joe is still hard as iron.

“I know, I know. It’s so strange!” He laughs, running a finger through the mess on his stomach. “It’s a different sensation through the whole body. More like when you fuck me, but also not.” Smiling, he offers his finger out for Nicky, who sucks it into the wet heat of his mouth, savouring the taste of salt and skin. “Please,” Joe says, hoarse, “if you’re not tired, please don’t stop.”

Nicky can _feel_ the way his face softens. He releases Joe’s finger to say, “Anything for you, my love.” And then, because Joe is his muse as much as Nicky is Joe’s, he gets an excellent idea.

“I know that look,” Joe says with amusement thick in his voice.

Smiling, Nicky pats his hip. “Turn over.”

And Joe, a very clever man, immediately catches on. “My God, you’ll kill me,” he says, already shuffling around to get to his elbows and knees. With the plump swell of his ass cheek right there, what can Nicky do but lean forward and bite it. Joe groans and drops his head, cock bobbing between his legs.

Switching the percussor to his left hand makes Nicky realise just how numb his right had become. He shakes it out, flexes his fingers, until his healing kicks in and restores sensation. Joe shivers hard at the return of the percussor to his perineum despite how Nicky fumbles with his off-hand to position it properly. Soothing him with gentle pets over the small of his back from dimple to dimple, Nicky listens for the sound of Joe’s deeper breaths as he calms himself. Only then does he trail his fingers in a firm stroke all the way down Joe’s crack until he is stopped by the machine itself, buzzing away. He strokes back up, lets the pads of his fingers catch on Joe’s rim and press there one after the other.

Joe lets out a choked moan.

“Yes?” Nicky asks.

“God yes, your mouth, please,” is the desperate reply.

Nicky does love to use his mouth.

It’s difficult, though, to split his concentration on keeping the percussor pressed to Joe’s taint while burying his face between Joe’s cheeks, tongue licking long wet stripes over Joe’s hole. He can feel the vibrations buzzing through Joe’s body to his mouth. Joe keens and rolls his hips back - and the percussor slips.

“No no no,” Joe wails.

With the palm of his hand, Nicky gives Joe a warning tap to the ass. “Stay still.”

“I will, I will, Nicky, please.”

Nicky repositions the percussor, pressing harder than before to keep his arm steady, then shoves his face back where they both want it to be, lipping at Joe’s rim, massaging his tongue wetly against the wrinkled skin, dipping just inside where Joe tastes powerfully of himself. He loses himself in it, like a feast before a starving man, makes such a mess of Joe that saliva dribbles over his balls, smearing all over Nicky’s face, dripping down his chin and tickling his nose.

Joe is barely breathing he’s holding himself so still. He shivers with every greedy thrust of Nicky’s tongue, every hungry nip of his teeth, and over it all the percussor keeps pulsing. His come dribbles across the table in sticky wet drips.

Being an eight-hundred year old itinerant mercenary has taught Nicky the value of preparedness, so it is with a sense of personal satisfaction that he pulls from his trouser pocket a small vial of olive oil, all while keeping Joe distracted between the insistent percussor and his devouring mouth. He pops the cap one-handed and pulls back - Joe cries out a wordless plea - and pours it all over Joe’s crack. It drips to the table, shining amber next to the splatters of white leaked from Joe’s cock.

Dropping the bottle, Nicky chases errant golden drops running down Joe’s thighs. He scoops them up with his fingers, rubs them into Joe’s hole already slick with spit and beginning to wink wider. Joe opens for him beautifully, welcoming two fingers into his body.

The vibrations are stronger inside. Nicky allows them to guide his touch, knows he has struck his target when Joe chokes and a surge of come splatters the table, audible even over the buzzing. This time he anticipates the way Joe jolts back, manages to keep the percussor in position while rubbing hard with the pads of his fingers, and another pulse of come blurts out. Joe bites his own forearm to muffle his shout.

Three times more Joe rides the strange wave they have discovered, coming apart on Nicky’s fingers as his cock weeps and weeps, flushed dark and still achingly hard. It’s long enough that Nicky, sweating with arousal, stirs in his trousers. He leans in to bite Joe’s cheek, tastes olive oil and sweat. Joe cries out and spills again, adding to the puddle beneath him, showing no sign of slowing down.

“Can I have you?” Nicky groans into his feverish skin.

“Always, always, please.”

Joe moans mournfully as Nicky pulls his hand free, and keens when the percussor is switched off and dropped carelessly aside. Nicky shushes him, fumbling with oil-slick fingers to open his button fly, shoving all the fabric down just enough to free his cock. It’s an undignified scramble to climb onto the table - it wobbles under the weight of two full grown men - but he finds his balance on his knees and then he finds Joe under his hands and then he’s shuffling closer, sliding home.

The angle is perfect: Joe’s spine a concave curve, his pelvis tilted to usher Nicky inside where he is slick wet and scalding hot. Nicky forces himself to stillness with that patience that Joe has praised and cursed in equal measure, waits for Joe to mewl and stutter his hips before Nicky grips him tight and thrusts hard.

“Fuck, Nicolò!” Joe cries, head tossing back. Nicky is too breathless to reply. He feels trapped inside his too-tight skin, burning with the need Joe kindled just by being himself, by being lost to hedonism, taking his pleasure from Nicky’s touch. He wants to launch Joe to heights unknown.

Joe shunts back into Nicky’s thrusts. “More, more, more,” he babbles, voice thick, even though he’s shaking all over, drenched in sweat, breath wheezing from his lungs. Every jolt of Nicky’s hips pushes more come from Joe in wet splashes. “More, please, please.” Nicky obeys, gritting his teeth against the rising tide of his own orgasm to keep ploughing into Joe, cock stabbing at that spot inside that makes him wild.

Time melts, meaningless. There is only Joe: the long tan stretch of his back, the sucking relentless heat of his core, the hoarse cries he makes to the rhythm of Nicky’s movements. Nicky blinks sweat from his eyes. He is lost to anything but this. Joe contracts around him again, gurgling in his throat, but there is no wet sound of his come pouring onto the table.

Nicky has fucked him dry.

On his next breath, Joe sobs.

Nicky stops.

“No, keep going,” Joe slurs, breathless and thready. His hand comes round to paw at Nicky’s thigh. “Want you to come.”

He can’t help it; his hips roll forward, chasing that heat. “Are you sure? It’s not too much?”

“It _is_ too much, it’s so _good_ , please my love."

Nicky bites his lip, rocks in again to test Joe’s response: a weakened moan, heavy with tears.

“I need to see your face,” Nicky decides.

It’s torture to pull out. Joe’s hole gapes open and Joe himself makes a pitiful noise of protest. Nicky guides him onto his side, and then onto his back, neither of them caring about the sticky puddle of come now smearing over Joe’s skin. His eyes are shining wet, lips bitten red, cock slick with come and still hard. His legs fall open and his arms, visibly shaking, lift up to welcome Nicky in.

Nicky lays down over him, hissing as their cocks brush together. Joe buries his hands in Nicky’s hair and tugs until their mouths meet, less a kiss and more a messy smear of their lips, teeth clicking together and catching on sensitive skin.

Joe wraps a leg around Nicky’s thigh, using his calf to pull Nicky close. “Please, please. Back in me, please.”

“Okay, okay,” Nicky soothes.

As he slides inside Joe’s waiting heat, the tears spill from Joe’s eyes, long glistening trails streaming over his beloved crow’s feet into his sweat-soaked curls. More fall as Nicky thrusts. Little squeaking grunts emanate from Joe with every shunt. He stares into Nicky’s eyes, expression cracked open, everything laid bare for Nicky to see without shame: love, and lust, and tenderness.

“Joe,” Nicky grinds out through gritted teeth. His balls hurt they’re drawn up so tight, cock aching in Joe’s heat. “My heart, please."

“Nicolò.”

Just his name. Nothing else.

Nicky comes like an explosion. Eyes squeezed shut, he jolts his hips again and again as his body floods with pleasure so sharp it’s agony. He needs Joe’s kiss more than he needs air, and shoves upwards - Joe bellows as Nicky’s cock plunges in deeper still - and then Nicky has his hands in Joe’s hair and is pulling his head up off the table to bite at his lips.

“Please, please,” Joe babbles into Nicky’s mouth, and Nicky doesn’t know what he means until Joe cants his hips and his cock is an unmistakable hot brand against Nicky’s belly.

Panting like a racehorse, he props his torso on his forearms and looks into Joe’s dark wet eyes, hips stuttering in an aftershock that tingles up his spine.

“Please, I need -"

“Shh, love.” Nicky shifts his weight to reach a hand between them, closing it in a loose hold around Joe’s swollen cock, blood-hot and slick with come against his palm.

“Please, Nicolò,” Joe grits out.

“It’ll hurt.”

“Need it. Need it, Nicolò, please -”

“Okay, okay.” Nicky tightens his grip. Inside Joe he is slowly softening but he can still thrust in time with his fist moving with deliberate purpose. Joe thrashes his head, hands clutching at Nicky’s shoulders, scratching his chest. He can barely catch his breath but Nicky doesn’t stop, keeps his hold tight and lets Joe’s body guide him.

Joe’s back arches as tension spikes through him, higher and higher, building to agony, his whole body shaking, jaw dropped open and mouth gasping as he hovers on the cusp. He’s already given so much, Nicky isn’t sure Joe can get there, but then on a slip of Nicky’s thumb over the eye of Joe’s cock he does, coming with his mouth wide open in a silent scream. He clenches down so hard on Nicky sheathed inside him that Nicky gets something like another orgasm, too, a dry spasm that ripples through him like a tidal wave.

Nicky collapses, still buried to the hilt, Joe’s collarbone digging hard against his nose. Beneath him, Joe shudders uncontrollably, chest labouring for breaths that catch wetly around a near-continuous moan low in his throat. When Nicky tries to get up, Joe wraps all four limbs tight around him like an octopus, “No no no,” falling from his lips.

“Shh, alright, my heart,” Nicky murmurs, soothing him with gentle kisses pressed to the curve of his neck, stroking a hand over his flank. “I’m here."

Eventually, Nicky’s cock slips free of Joe; they both shiver. Nicky attempts to take his own weight again and this time Joe lets him. On hands and knees he gets a good look at Joe: sweat-soaked and covered in come, whole body shaking, enormous eyes still wet and overwhelmed.

“Oh my love,” Nicky sighs, petting a hand over Joe’s bearded cheek. “Too much?”

Joe shakes his head. Sucking in a breath, he offers a tremulous smile. “So good.” His voice is utterly wrecked. Trembling fingers catch hold of Nicky’s hand, weaving between Nicky’s like they were made to be there. “I love you,” Joe says thickly.

Nicky’s heart splits open, flooding him head to toe with a sensation infinitely better than the highs of orgasm. “I love _you_ ,” he says, swooping in for a kiss.

Against Nicky's sternum, the frantic percussion of Joe’s heartbeat gradually slows. When he next smiles, it’s a return to the roguish curve Nicky loves. His voice has already healed to normal when he says, “Please pass on my compliments to Dr Granville on his fine invention. Modern technology is a marvel.”

Nicky snorts a laugh. “I don’t think he intended it to be used like this."

“Perhaps not,” Joe says around a yawn, “but I can certainly recommend it as a cure for insomnia.” He closes his eyes and fakes a snore.

Sighing fondly, Nicky resettles himself, humming pleased when Joe wraps his arms around his back and drops a kiss on his head. “I agree,” Nicky murmurs.

A little nap won’t hurt. They have time, and there’s no where he would rather be than in Joe’s safe harbour.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took four (4) rewrites.


	5. A Nevada Highway, September 1950

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 16\. cuckolding // role reversal // **voyeurism** (very very very subtle)  
> 17\. knife play // fisting // **restrained or bondage**  
>  18\. master and slave // lapdances // **uniforms** (eh, kinda)

#### Tonopah, Nevada, USA - September, 1950

The room has no windows. It’s utterly dark but for the single low-hung light hovering directly above the table at which Nicky sits, aching shoulders hunched to accommodate his wrists cuffed behind his back. In the corner of the room, the very young deputy stands, hands on his hips and face shrouded in shadow, finger twitching on the handle of his gun every time Nicky so much as blinks. 

Nicky tries not to blink. 

He’s been here hours at this point, has lost track of night and day but thinks it must be early morning by now judging by the gurgle of his belly. Beyond the door to this interrogation room, all is quiet. Nicky takes deep, measured breaths to maintain his calm. He must be ready to seize any opportunity that presents itself so that he can escape. 

The door opens on well-oiled hinges and admits the sheriff, a portly man with a thick white moustache and cheeks pouched out with chewing tobacco, gold star spangling on his chest. He enters alone and stands next to his deputy. “Report?” 

The deputy shakes his head. “He’s just been sitting there. It’s creepy. He doesn’t even blink.” 

“He said anything?” 

“No sir.” 

The sheriff looks at Nicky. “Hm. Could be foreign. You tried Spanish?” 

Shuffling his feet, the deputy folds his arms. “No sir. I mean, to look at him, I wouldn’t say he was Mexican. I reckon it’s more likely he speaks Russian.” 

Nicky breathes, and doesn’t blink, and sits very still, while his mind whirs a mile a minute. He spoke very clear English to the traffic cop that picked him up at sunset off the side of the interstate walking west out of town, but his accent was enough apparently to warrant suspicion. In the wake of McCarthy’s hysterical accusations, Nicky just isn’t American enough to pass. When he was tossed unceremoniously into this black interrogation room, he decided then that silence was his best course of action. Maybe that’s more of a problem now. 

The sheriff pulls out the chair opposite Nicky and sits with a creak of his leather gun holster. “You Russian? Uh, Russki?” 

Nicky holds his tongue. 

Sighing, the sheriff leans back, legs splayed wide and hands folded over the bulge of his belly. “Look, son, I’m sure you’ve done nothing wrong. All you gotta do is tell us where you’ve come from, where you’re headed, and we can let you go.” 

The deputy puts his hands on his hips again, fingers less than an inch from his gun. “He might’ve come from that base north of Indian Springs.” 

The sheriff chews his mouthful of tobacco with a little slurping sound. “Is that right, son? You came all the way from Groom Lake?” 

In all honesty, Nicky hasn’t heard of either of those places, though at this point there is no reason to respond. He can see they’re drawing their own conclusions based on nothing but shadows on the wall. 

If he can’t find his own way out, his only hope is rescue. Has he missed the rendezvous time yet? Impossible to tell in this room. But he has hope. His family will find him; come hell or high water, they’ll send in someone to get him out. Probably Booker. He’s best with Americans. 

“He looks like a commie,” says the deputy. “Should we call someone?” 

The sheriff slurps more on his cheek of tobacco, eyeing Nicky thoughtfully. “Is that what you want, son? Want us to call the higher authorities? They’ll take you away God knows where. You might never see the light of day again.” 

Nicky’s next breath shudders through him as he fights not to show how deep that particular fear runs. He has trust, he has faith: in his family, in destiny, in Joe. 

_Knock knock._

The sheriff and the deputy both startle, turning to stare at the door. Nicky’s fingers flex behind his back. 

“Too early for the day shift,” says the sheriff. 

The deputy shoots Nicky a dark look. “Could be _his_ back-up. Commies probably put a receiver in his _brain_.” 

The sheriff creaks to his feet, scoffing, “You watch too much TV.” Nevertheless, he draws his gun as he goes to the door. “We’re busy with a suspect. What do you want?” 

“FBI,” says a familiar female voice. Nicky’s spine uncoils. 

The sheriff glares at Nicky, then the deputy. “Did you call it in?” he demands. 

The deputy shakes his head. He looks spooked. 

Andy raps on the door again, harder. “Let us in.” 

With a huff that ruffles his moustache, the sheriff holsters his gun and pulls open the door. Andy strides immediately through wearing a sharp black suit. Standing three inches taller than the two other men in the room and with the air of an unstoppable force, she sends the sheriff stumbling back. Behind her marches Joe, dressed in a crisp blue police uniform that is two sizes too small. 

Nicky suppresses a smile. Last time it was he who wore the disguise. 

Andy’s eyes flick over Nicky before she turns to the sheriff. “You’ve done a good job apprehending this person of interest. We’ll take it from here.” She nods at Joe, who swoops forward to hoist Nicky out of the chair. Nicky stumbles as blood rushes through his numb legs, and Joe steadies him with two hands made to seem rough and uncaring. 

“Let’s go!” Joe barks. 

The sheriff splutters. “Now wait a goddamn minute! That’s our suspect! You can’t just -” He stops talking at one look from Andy. 

“Have a seat, gentlemen,” she says, implacable as an iceberg. “I’ll explain exactly what’s going to happen.” 

Joe pulls Nicky into the corridor where they pass Booker - suited and booted; Nicky’s never seen him look so tidy - who gives them a smirk before he enters the interrogation room and closes the door behind him, trapping the sheriff and the deputy in with Booker and Andy. 

“Come on, this way.” Joe urges Nicky down the steps, still holding him by the arm. There’s a slick black Bel Air parked out front but Joe guides Nicky to the right, past the black and white police car to the bulky service-issued Harley Davidson resting next to it. 

Helpfully, someone has left the key in the ignition. After all, who would ever dare to steal a police motorbike? 

Joe grins at Nicky. “Climb on.” 

“A little difficult in cuffs.” Nicky jangles his bound wrists in the small of his back for emphasis. 

“Not a problem.” Joe offers the support of two palms cupping Nicky’s hips as Nicky swings his leg over. The fact that his hands skate over the round of Nicky’s backside is a predictable detour: Joe has always found getaways exciting. 

Still, Nicky shoots Joe a look that says, _Really, my love? Now?_

And Joe’s eyebrows reply, _I’m innocent of any wrongdoing and you know it._

To which Nicky can only roll his eyes, smiling fondly, as Joe slides on in front of him, the broad expanse of his back pressing warm to Nicky’s chest. The engine rumbles to life between Nicky’s thighs, a deep growl that vibrates inside his ribcage. Joe kicks the stand back with his heel. His ‘borrowed’ pants visibly strain at the seams as he levers the bike onto its centre of gravity. While the town sleeps on into the pre-dawn hour, Joe and Nicky make their escape. 

The cool night wind feels like freedom across Nicky’s face as they head out onto the open road. On either side, the desert rolls out in shades of blue beneath a clear sky; the moon hangs fat and round, balanced on the tip of Brougher Mountain behind them as Joe steers onto the 95 heading south, back the way Nicky came. An old trick: to retrace their steps rather than leave a helpful new trail for their pursuers to track. 

Joe guns it hard for the first ten miles, but with no sign of a chase he eases back on the throttle, tension uncoiling along his shoulders. Nicky lets himself relax, too, eyes closed and cheek pressed to Joe’s curly hair, the full width of his chest cleaved to the full width of Joe’s back. He presses a kiss to the sweat-tangy patch of skin peeking above the neckline of Joe’s borrowed shirt, is gratified to feel Joe shudder at the touch. Legs splayed either side of Joe’s hips, Nicky lets the rumble of the engine thrum through him, lets the gentle dip and sway of the road coax him forward in little rocking movements, his mouth lipping at Joe’s neck, his thighs cradling Joe’s body, his fingers flexing uselessly at the small of his back. 

It’s the relief, more than anything, that lights Nicky up from the inside. Joe feels a hot thrill from getaways, but Nicky takes pleasure in having gotten away, the success of escape secure with the love of his life. The further they get from Tonopah, the slower his heart drums, the more the relief washes through his veins in warm, fizzing waves. 

As the bike eats up the distance and the eastern horizon begins to pale, it’s enough to bask in the heat between their two bodies. Arousal kindles like embers in Nicky’s belly, little sparks fluttering up his spine and down to his groin. He dozes, warm and safe perched on the back of the bike, braced entirely by Joe’s sturdy mass, nose buried in Joe’s hair and his mouth open against the knob of Joe’s spine. 

Half way to Beatty, just beyond the Shoshone reservation, Joe hangs a left and takes them off-road. The bike bounces over the rough terrain; Nicky has to grip with his legs to stay seated. They crest a small rise and coast down the other side, out of sight of the road. 

There’s not much here but brittle yellow grass and dust kicked up by the bike wheels swirling on the breeze. Joe kills the engine and flicks down the stand before he dismounts. Nicky half-lifts himself off the seat preparing to follow when Joe’s mouth descends suddenly on his, hot and hungry. Lips parting in instinct, Nicky drops back down, head tilting at the urging of Joe’s hands as they cup his face. He moans, a sound swallowed greedily by Joe, who grunts high in his throat and thrusts his tongue into Nicky’s willing mouth. 

“Nicky,” Joe mutters. His hands coast along Nicky’s neck and over his shoulders, fingers gripping at the cotton. Only his name, but to Nicky it says volumes: _I missed you_ and _I’m so relieved we found you_ and _If you ever do that again I’ll kill you myself_ and _I love you so much I thought I’d die_. 

Nicky opens his mouth wider, meets every stroke of Joe’s tongue, returns every grunt and sigh. His lips buzz with the burn of Joe’s beard. His jaw aches at the hinges. A jolt of his shoulders reminds him that his hands are bound and useless, and he breaks the kiss with a wet slick sound that pulses through his core. 

“Yusuf, please.” 

Joe grips Nicky’s hips and hikes upwards. Nicky nearly topples off the bike but Joe steadies him, gets him to the ground in two efficient movements. 

Then he drops to his knees there in the dust. 

Arms twitching with aborted movement, Nicky shuffles his feet wider to make space for Joe. “My hands?” 

Joe looks up through his lashes, something hot and dark like black humour flashing through his eyes. He makes short work of Nicky’s belt and zipper, pops open the one button of his underwear fly and Nicky’s cock takes care of the rest as it falls half-plumped through the gap into the cool morning air. 

One hand keeping him steady, Joe opens his mouth and gulps him down, his eyelids fluttering shut as he groans. Nicky tips his head back on a gasp. He hasn’t slept or eaten or showered, and none of it seems to matter at all. Joe sucks with abandon as Nicky thickens in the wet heat of his mouth. His fingers frame Nicky’s hips, small grounding points of contact while Nicky’s eyes close and his brain spins. 

Joe bobs his head, swallowing more and more as Nicky hardens to his full length. Nicky loves to look at Joe when his mouth is stretched around Nicky’s girth. With some effort, he drops his chin to his chest. Joe’s hair ruffles in the desert wind and Nicky twitches his hands to sink his fingers into those curls but the damn cuffs _clink_ , holding him back. 

His next vocal grunt must contain more annoyance because Joe opens his eyes and pulls off Nicky’s cock. A strand of saliva connects his bottom lip to Nicky’s cock, before Joe flicks his tongue out. The desert air is rapidly warming as day approaches but it nevertheless feels cool against Nicky’s dick, slick from Joe’s mouth and missing the heat. 

“Alright?” Joe rasps. 

Nicky shakes his cuffed hands again. “Want to touch you.” 

Joe’s grin is ten kinds of filthy. “I’m busy right now.” He pumps a hand over Nicky’s cock, smearing a thick blob of precome with the palm of his hand. Hips hitching into Joe’s grip, Nicky gives a shamelessly wanton groan. 

“There we go,” Joe murmurs, twisting his wrist on the upstroke in full knowledge of what it does to Nicky. His voice is rough, his eyes voracious. “You don’t need to touch.” Like a bespelled snake, he shuffles closer on his knees in the dust. “Just let me -” 

The sudden burning heat of his mouth after the cool air has Nicky hissing. “Fuck,” he curses, loud in the silent morning, wrestles his shoulders to no purpose while Joe sucks like he’s starved for days for the taste of Nicky. 

Nicky hunches over the ache in his balls until his forehead is inches from Joe’s. Up close he has a pornographic view of the stretch of Joe’s lips, pink and shiny amongst his wiry beard, can hear his little grunts of effort, the harried breaths through his nose as he swallows. His eyes are half-closed, lost in the pleasure of it, fingers flexing on Nicky’s hips as he tongues the bulbous head of Nicky’s cock. 

It’s too much, after days alone and hours under arrest, physically stressed and emotionally relieved. Nicky pants for breath as all his muscles seize, thighs shaking with the coiling tension winding tighter. Nicky can barely keep his hips still, has to lock his knees as the pleasure mounts and mounts, a tidal wave reaching the shore. 

Orgasm slits through him sharp as a blade and he keens at the sting of it. Joe is frantic at the end, gulping Nicky’s dick down his throat, lips brushing Nicky’s pubic hair. He keeps swallowing even as Nicky keens into his cloud of black curls, doesn’t let go of Nicky’s cock as it begins to soften. 

“Yusuf,” Nicky moans, when the pleasure twists on a knife’s edge. Joe pulls off, panting for breath, his forehead pressed into Nicky’s soft belly. Nicky can only watch, his fingers clenched with want, as Joe unzips his fly and stuffs a hand into the dark interior. His head tips back on a loud groan. His arm jerks in the little space afforded by his stolen, too-tight pants. 

“Nicolò.” Beneath his lowered lids, he stares hungrily at Nicky. “God, I - please -” 

Ignoring the ache pulling at his shoulders, Nicky bends to smother Joe’s begging lips with a furious kiss. Joe rolls his hips into his fist, releasing a series of short, desperate shouts into Nicky’s mouth as he comes. 

Nicky kisses him through it, lowering him from frantic to gentle as Joe’s breaths settle. 

After long minutes of nothing but the soft exchange of air, Nicky straightens, wincing at the strain in his back. Joe blinks up at him. His hand is still in his pants, curled around his dick and probably a sticky mess. 

“If you have any coordination left …” Nicky jangles his cuffs for effect. 

Joe smiles the vacant smile he gets after a long-awaited orgasm. He takes his hand out of his pants and wipes it on his shirt, leaving a very obvious white smear. Then he tucks Nicky’s flaccid cock away before he climbs to his feet, sways into Nicky’s lax lean and kisses him, while his hands work blindly behind Nicky’s back. 

The moment Nicky’s hands are free, he sinks them into Joe’s curls, holding him still while Nicky bites at his mouth. Joe takes it with good grace, still a little vapid after sex. When Nicky lets him go, he smiles again. 

“I found you,” he says, looking with adoration into Nicky’s eyes. 

Nicky knocks his forehead to Joe’s. “You found me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who knew that October 2020 would last so long???


End file.
